Tag: dailyparenting

Accidents in the home are the primary cause of death in U.S. children. By taking a few simple precautions, these injuries can be avoided, making your home safe for your child and the children who visit it.

In your kitchen, you should be sure to install safety latches on cabinets and drawers. This helps keep them out of the everyday household chemicals you use to clean your home and dishware with, and also keeps them from grabbing sharp objects like scissors or knives from inside the drawers. Use the back burners when cooking on the stovetop, and keep the handles of your pots and pans turned out of a curious child’s reach while cooking.

Safety latches should be installed on cabinets and drawers in your bathrooms as well to keep them out of unsafe household cleaning products and medicines. Be sure to unplug any electrical appliance such as a blow dryer or curling iron directly after use and put out of a child’s reach. Teach them early that electricity and water do not mix and that no electrical appliances of any kind should ever be immersed in or placed under running water. Toilet locks should also be used in homes that have small children to keep lids down. Young children are ‘top heavy’ and can easily fall into a toilet if they lean in to play in it. Since a young child can drown in less than just an inch of water, it is imperative to closely supervise them in the bathroom at all times.

Around your house, be sure to secure furniture such as bookshelves and heavy furniture that could tip easily to the wall using brackets. Use doorknob covers to keep them out of rooms with potential hazards and to keep them from leaving the house unsupervised. Make sure your window blinds do not have looped cords on them as they can present a strangulation hazard to a young child. And always cover your electrical outlets with protective covers to keep small fingers from them and small objects from being inserted into them.

Check your house over carefully for other potential hazards and address them immediately. With these precautions and some common sense, your household will be your child’s haven.

Communicating with our children can be a difficult task at times. We feel like they’re not listening to us; they feel like we’re not listening to them. Good listening and communications skills are essential to successful parenting. Your child’s feelings, views and opinions have worth, and you should make sure you take the time to sit down and listen openly and discuss them honestly.

It seems to be a natural tendency to react rather than to respond. We pass judgment based on our own feelings and experiences. However, responding means being receptive to our child’s feelings and emotions and allowing them to express themselves openly and honestly without fear of repercussion from us. By reacting, we send our child the message that their feelings and opinions are invalid. But by responding and asking questions about why the child feels that way, it opens a dialog that allows them to discuss their feelings further, and allows you a better understanding of where they’re coming from. Responding also gives you an opportunity to work out a solution or a plan of action with your child that perhaps they would not have come up with on their own. Your child will also appreciate the fact that maybe you do indeed understand how they feel.

It’s crucial in these situations to give your child your full and undivided attention. Put down your newspaper, stop doing dishes, or turn off the television so you can hear the full situation and make eye contact with your child. Keep calm, be inquisitive, and afterwards offer potential solutions to the problem.

Don’t discourage your child from feeling upset, angry, or frustrated. Our initial instinct may be to say or do something to steer our child away from it, but this can be a detrimental tactic. Again, listen to your child, ask questions to find out why they are feeling that way, and then offer potential solutions to alleviate the bad feeling.

Just as we do, our children have feelings and experience difficult situations. By actively listening and participating with our child as they talk about it, it demonstrates to them that we do care, we want to help and we have similar experiences of our own that they can draw from. Remember, respond – don’t react.

Imagine how much better a place the world would be if we all dream like kids again. If we are able to embrace our every passion and believe that anything and everything is possible and options for the future are limited only by our imagination.

Now when the tables have turned and I see that free spirit in my child I want to keep that will power and mood to inspire him/her to realise and make these dreams to come true.

1. Be a dream role-model

Grownups have dreams too! Share them with your kids. Or be open about what you dreamed of becoming as a child, and discuss why it didn’t, or possibly did, happen. They will gain bravery in their own dreams when they see you chasing yours, celebrating your successes and bouncing back from your challenges.

2. Make time for creative play

Remind them that they can be anything they want when they grow up via role play games: a dentist, a teacher, a scientist, a doctor, an author. Have an honest talk about all of the hard work their dreams will require while letting them know that they are 100 percent capable of achieving their wildest dreams!

3. Be inspired by other big dreamers

Your children can learn from the world’s top scientists, musicians, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, and be inspired by their stories. They can also learn from inspiring people in your family and community.

4. Creating a Dream Diary or Board

Dream diaries or boards are incredibly useful and inspirational when making your own. By representing your goals with pictures and images you will actually build up and stimulate your emotions because your mind responds strongly to visual stimulation, and your emotions are the vibrational energy that activates the Law of Attraction. Your kid would love the idea of drawing his/her dreams, ideas and imagining the future.

5. Set them up for success

Success is inspiring, especially for children. Help them to experience success with their initial goals and dreams so that they are motivated to keep going.

6. Address challenges and failures

Young people need to learn that challenges and mistakes are normal. What’s important is how they approach them. They need to:

Believe it’s possible.

Put in the effort.

Stay determined.

7. Read books

Reading quality books foster kids imagination, enriches the vocabulary and can throw open a window to the world. The fantastic stories and expansive ideas in books can feed a child’s imagination to open up great possibilities. Choose books that encourage your kids to think beyond their size and dream big.

8. Encouraging curiosity in kids

A vital element in education and in life is curiosity that drives us to learn new things and discover how things work around us. While there are various ways to stimulate our curiosity, it is crucial that we instill this in our children from young.

9. Inspire them

Feed your kids imaginations! Take them to museums, travel with them, read books, explore with them. Let them know what’s out there, help them discover what is possible.

10. Dream together

They will gain courage in their own dreams, when they see you chasing yours, celebrating your successes and bouncing back from your challenges. Dreaming as a family also helps kids look beyond themselves and work as a team.